Sunday, August 26, 2007

After I went in to the sheriff's office personally, they came out. And found our truck.

Upside down, in the middle of the river.

The alleged meth-heads had apparently tried to ford what is usually a smallish creek with it- except it was swollen from the rains- which picked the truck up and flipped it. Dumping all the tools in it into the flooding creek.

Oddly, the chainsaw was on the shore- they'd evidently been using it. That still works.

No insurance is going to cover the truck- it wasn't covered as a "vehicle" - but being a truck, is apparently not a "farm machine", either... nice loophole for them.

And- both my professional mowers; critical for our harvests, were in the shop being repaired.

Here's the shop:

Right smack in the middle of this photo; which I borrowed from the Rochester Post Bulletin (many thanks).

So, they're toast. At least as big a problem as the untruck. Pretty hard to do our harvest stuff in grass up to our knees.

But, the sun is shining. And in a very bizarre development- our crops are NOT being stolen by the crows and jays as fast as usual. I was out before dawn checking- there just seem to be very few jays at all. West Nile? Possible.

I HAVE had a few volunteer pickers show up- a huge help. Long long ways to go, though- our harvest; of 3 different tree crops; runs through October. All the time.

19 comments:

That makes the truck a flood loss, I assume, since it was driven into a flood and ruined. Maybe some flood aid will help replace it.

I hope the repair place's insurance sees that the mowers get replaced fast or pays for getting the mowing done on the harvest schedule.

Seems like agriculture may need to start working back toward plants that have extended ripening and harvesting timing, with the weather getting more variable, to spread the risk. Hmmm, isn't that how nature did it?

Erika- awww. :-) many thanks. What we really need around here is a bunch of solid well paid employees. Getting there is not easy, though, particularly when Ma Nature keeps chopping the cash flow down below zero. One of my favorite quotes from The Land Remembers - a farmer during harvest "I need me either 3 darn good hired men, or another wife." :-)

Hank- well, the truck IS kind of a flood loss, but tangled up in a felony- you wanna guess how many hours I'd get to sit waiting for the next FEMA exec to figure that out? :-) while the bluejays and crows are are working as hard as they can? sigh.

Well, that IS a mixed bag - truck in the creek with the tools, but the chainsaw on the bank. I'll continue to keep you in my prayers, perhaps it's prayers and not West Nile keeping those birds away? smile

Greenpa, my hopes for a swift recovery. I saw a lot of the damage from the floods in Coffeyville, KS here just a couple weeks ago, so I know how much damage flood water can do. Of course, the flood there was made worse by many gallons of oil from the refinery, but still, it is devastating. I'm glad to hear that you will have a harvest at all.

It's always odd for me to find out that people (who I've imagined live far away from me) actually live a stone's throw away. I live in the Rochester region as well. While my family's house was spared, so many friends and co-worker's houses were flooded. I hope that your crops are still salvageable. After yesterday's "flash flood" warning, I'm wondering if we are ever going to be dry again...

Greenpa, good wishes for you on this. Just before I moved to NYC, a friend told me that about once a year, i would wake up and go out for the paper, and get hit by a bus while I watched them tow my car, wake up to find out my mother was in jail, walk barefoot to the Tombs to get her out, get mugged on the way, and find myself 48 hours later broke, shoeless, and without a paper :). It turned out to be true after a fashion. It sounds like this is the rural equivalent. But it seems to me that you're the guy who can muddle through such a thing. So I'm not a praying kind of person, but here's my best good wishes for you.

As to the harvest and flood/ theft damage. . . I'm not sure what to do.Greenpa's trying to keep cheerful, but I can tell it's hard. He hasn't been able to spend as much time out in the field, so we're way behind.Add to the truck and flooded mowers, a sick wife. . . . Maybe he does need two wives!SIGH!I haven't been able to pull in as much harvest as normal, maybe only 5 bushels a day. (I can usually do 15!)So all your best wishes are deeply appriciated. By greenpa and myself.

Oddly, I feel better hearing that all is not perfect in Simple Life Land. I live there too, but in a different climate zone. I am glad that your crop is on the trees and not blown away as it would be in a storm in my yard. Dean almost got us last week. As I had mentioned before, so many other monetary obligations take us away from our designs on simplicity and often Nature undermines the plan too and we are left to look to the more complicated talents we have to bail ourselves out.Thankfully, we have some complicated talents!I'm glad you are bailing out the situation right there on Good Ol' Big Woods and that the birds are busy elsewhere. So hey, stop a while and eat a peach.Many of your problems are similar to the ones I have here, if you substitute crack for meth and drought and Sahara dust for flooding. I empathize with the struggle, but I think that after 30 years of doing what you are doing, you have the tricks figured out.The growing game is never all that easy but you seem to have a good crop, more than you can pick, and that is way better than the alternative. Hope the weather eases up for you soon.

about me-

It's a play on Grandpa, and green, as in environmentally aware, and Pa, as in ... Pa. An actual grandpa twice, and a Pa three times.

64, kids from two marriages, currently with an 8 year old zooming around the house. The house is as advertised, a very small log cabin in the woods. Tiny. It's like living on a yacht; no closet space, which is maybe half of why #1 went away.

I've been living "ultra" green for 35 years. Off the grid always, business too. Electricity from solar; and a little gas backup in winter. Composting toilet, big garden, heat with wood. Not vegetarians; hunter/gatherer/gardener. Not opposed to people living in cities.

Bookmark and Sharing Tools

NEW! Subscribe To The Little Blog...

Followers

Basic Green Practices in the Little House

1) Off the grid. 31 years. Solar electricity2) Limited power- house electricity has 4 golf cart batteries.3) Composting toilet. Outside. (eew, you do that indoors!?)4) No road to house. You gotta walk.5) No running water in house. Water pumped by wind.6) Showers solar heated; outdoors.7) Heat with wood. One stove in house-..8) Cook with wood 8 months, propane in summer9) Most of our fuelwood now is from trees we planted10) No refrigerator. 31 years. You don't need one either.11) Big garden.12) Eat locally when possible, not obsessive about it.13) No pesticide use ever, gardens or crops; not even organic (ok, except a little in the outhouse and the greenhouse...)14) Earth sheltered solar greenhouse (aren't they all solar??)15) Shut up about it. Nobody likes preaching.16. These are our choices- yours are yours.

Basic Practices On This Blog-

1) I do not have time to dig out all the references for you- if you doubt something I say here, google it immediately- and don't bug me if I'm off by a couple of degrees.2)"Eat compost and die" type comments will cheerfully be deleted. They won't even tick me off, I just feel pity. Really. So if I were you, I wouldn't bother. (Note to other bloggers- this requirement for basic politeness works- total # of mean comments deleted by me so far ~ 5; spammers deleted ~ 10)3) Long comments on posts are quite welcome; don't worry about it.4) I WILL try to answer questions, but it may take me a while to get to them.

5) I don't do memes. Sorry- fun, I know, but I really don't have the time.

6) I can't do email, either; I'm already drowning in the stuff from my other life; and I can't get into giving personal advice. If you want to contact me, just make a comment with your email address in it; I'll get back to you if I can.